Red

after splatoon 1’s story ended with its final splatfest, the SRL tumblr started posting about callie being missing, including a series of short stories about the squid sisters. these posts culminated in a story mode trailer for splatoon 2 with the following caption:

they did not anticipate that everyone would assume callie was DEAD. she lost the final splatfest and it LITERALLY KILLED HER.

the fandom began to lose their minds. it was absolute chaos. for a time, the phrase “but where’s Callie?” became a sleeper agent trigger word for anxious callie stans assuming the worst about their favorite girliepop. eventually Nintendo of America confirmed that she was indeed going to appear in the next game, which finally laid the “callie is DEAD” theories to rest.

fast forward to end-of-year 2019, when Nintendo of America took over for splatoon’s socials while SRL transitioned away from tumblr (temporarily). splatoon 2’s final splatfest was a loss for marina, which historically does not end well for the idol on the losing team, and the fandom was still on high alert from The Callie Incident. on their official instagram, NoA posted the following photo:

I think you see where this is going.

mass panic descended as splatoon 1 oldheads awakened en masse, activated by the forbidden phrase. assumptions were made. theories were crafted. people were sure that marina would end up being the antagonist of splatoon 3… or maybe she was DEAD.

as it turns out, she was the one taking the photo. a separate angle of the picture was posted on their facebook the next day, revealing that it was, in fact, their yearly “happy holidays” post from the dev team.

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